NOt Yours - Stockton
I have finished the Not Yours creation, rehearsal and debut at ARC, Stockton. The making of this show was truly a BLESSING, A PRIVILEGE AND A PLEASURE. (And actually, fairly painless?!?)
Largest scale work of my own creation yet, a year in planning, 6 weeks of rehearsals with the burlesque troupe and 2 weeks in rehearsal with my ensemble team. (And days of my life spent on the X10 to Stockton).
Forever blown away that anyone believes in my mad little ideas and to have so many people help make them a reality and come from all corners of the U.K. to support !!!?! My god, how lucky I am.
Thankyou to ARC for believing me when I said “I want to make a show about rape but I swear down it’ll be REALLY FUN and everyone will laugh loads and cry and be really angry and also there’ll be circus and drag and burlesque and my community element?!? Well I want to take people who have experienced sexual violence, who are normally handled with nicety nice sensitive kid gloves, IF they’re even given any opportunity to speak about their experience at all, well I want to teach them burlesque, and create sexy, scary, confident MONSTERSSSS.” It’s somatic therapy but giving full cunt. The body remembers, but this time it will remember exactly who and what we are, and that is in charge, in control and invincible. Platforming and facilitating people to empower themselves, and giving people opportunities to do the cool scary shit that helped change my life is so special to me. Once you’ve had a room full of people screaming and applauding you for stripping, it becomes very difficult to accept any less. My beginners burlesque troupe were so incredible, warm, supportive of each other and me. There was a point in maybe the second or third rehearsal where I realised just how much trust they were putting in me, and my vision for the show. It wasn’t that I hadn’t realised the gravity of asking people to do this with me, but that was when I saw they had released and were allowing themselves to dive headfirst into this crazy new thing, this unique experience. To come together with a group of people who all had a mutual understanding that, yes we have experienced sexual violence in our past, yes we are all doing something new, brave and terrifying and yes, we get to do it together and we get to be excellent.
I said in my panel interview “you know in a musical people sing when their emotions get too big for them to express with normal words? Well I’m a bit like that but instead of singing I take my top off!” And we all laughed. But I actually wasn’t joking.
The special-est of shout-outs to my brilliant producers, Allison Birt and Andy Newcombe - both of them held the project at different gestation points, but were both 100 percent my biggest cheerleaders. Thanks for making sure weird, sexy, queer, radical cabaret gets funding put into it.
Thankyou to my beautiful ensemble, who amongst hoards of brilliant applications, we pulled together a beautifully balanced set of skills and energies, for all of silliness and jokes and for not outwardly judging me when I forced everyone to sit through Liza Minnellis - Maybe This Time on our 2nd day, whilst I cried and explained that this song was so special because look !! It’s all about hope !!! (I also made everyone watch scenes from Sweet Charity and the end scene of Deathproof - some may call that an abuse of power, I call it a cultural education).
A gorgeous ebb and flow of energy, skillset exchange and play.
Light as the air, and hangs by her hair - Poppy Plowman
Strongest woman in the world, our music maestro - Nora Ireland
Neither king nor queen but our very own drag thing - Goblin
Sexy, sultry and ssssearing hot - Lady Lazarus
We are Not Your Baby, Not Your Object and Not Your Victim.
We are the Not Yours cabaret and we will be BACK!! (Stay tuned southerners 👀)